AMD has announced its plan to let different manufactures to design and manufacture its special Radeon X1950XT edition. It is expected these special edition may eventually has a lower cost than the official edition.

Some of these special editions have already been sent to AMD for verification and hopefully they will be available in the market in Mid-January.

VR-Zone also tells us to expect X1950XT and even X1950PRO prices to drop. Also AMD has cancelled plans for X1950GT video cards based on RV570LE, since it is no longer viable in the current price structure.

When you are looking for a high-end graphic card, says Radeon X1950XT for example, you may curious different brands have the same design of the model. They always look like the same, but definitely may not the same price. Indeed, most of the high-end models are manufactured by the same companies only, namely NVIDIA and AMD (formerly ATI). However, next time when you have a look to Radeon X1950XT, don’t overlook the special editions, they may no longer the same. AMD has announced its plan to let different manufactures to design and manufacture its special Radeon X1950XT edition. It is expected these special edition may eventually has a lower cost than the official edition so as to enhancing the competitive efficiency.

This action has been taken in Mid-Nov where AMD provided a design reference for manufacturers to build up their own special models. Some of these special editions have been sent to AMD for verification and hopefully they will be available in the market in Mid-Jan. While the official Radeon X1950XT 256MB has a price of $279, the special editions are probably lower than that. Yet its rival remains the same as GeForce 7950GT 512MB.

Radeon X1950 has two family members, Radeon X1950XT and Radeon X1950XTX. Basically, they are the same, says 16 Pixel Shader Pineline, 48 Pixel Shader Processor, and 8 Vertex Shader. XT edition has a lower clock speed at 625MHz and features 1.55GHz DDR3, while XTX edition has a lower clock speed at 625MHz and features 1.8GHz DDR4. In this action, only Radeon X1950XT is involved, Radeon X1950XTX is still all made by AMD.

Nonetheless, as the next-generation R600, which has a fully support of Direct X10, will be releasing in Q1 2007, analyst argued that the market of Radeon X1950XT is near the end. In fact, not really much manufacturers are willing to design its own edition as it is costly to open a manufacturing line.